Terezín Concentration Camp (Theresienstadt)

Terezín started life as a fortress town, built to protect Bohemia from Prussian attacks. But it's more familiar in the public imagination as Theresienstadt, the so-called 'Paradise Camp' used by the Nazis as a transit camp during WWII. It was at the Terezín Concentration Camp that many of the victims of the Holocaust were held while they awaited the journey to Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Terezín was used as a show camp by the SS to dupe foreign observers into thinking that all was well. But all was far from well. Although there were no mass exterminations, no gas chambers, prisoners were worked and punished without mercy, and many thousands died here.

The camp is now a memorial to the people who suffered in it. There is a museum devoted to its history and collections of the prisoners' art works, letters, photographs and memoirs.

Practical Info

Terezin is about an hour's journey by bus from Prague. The buses leave from Florenc station.